Le Pen pledges 'intelligent protectionism'

French presidential election campaign throws up echoes of Brexit and Trump as candidates compete for votes

Marine Le Pen, a front-runner in the first round of France's presidential election, has promised to deliver "intelligent protectionism" as part of her far-right manifesto.

Support for protectionism has emerged as a factor in the appeal of populist political challengers in Western democracies, even though it may be insufficient to hand Le Pen a victory in a runoff vote on May 7.

Her promises are somewhat vague. They include taxing imported goods that France could theoretically produce itself, while exempting foreign raw materials from tariffs.

Although Le Pen's speeches have been short on detail, she has praised punitive US taxes on cheap Chinese steel while denouncing global finance and mass immigration as part of her pledge to "restore to the French the conduct of their own affairs".

There are echoes of Britain's Brexit campaign and of Donald Trump's US presidential victory in this year's election rhetoric. In the case of Le Pen, however, there is cautious optimism among those who fear a swing to the right that the populist message will fail this time.

Le Pen is one of four front-runners in a field of 11 candidates, and most polls indicate she would face centrist newcomer Emmanuel Macron in the runoff on May 7. That said, a third of French voters were still undecided in the week leading up to the first round of voting, and a relative latecomer, the far left's Jean-Luc Melenchon, has been denting Macron's poll numbers.

Although he comes from the opposite end of the political spectrum from Le Pen, he has also attacked globalization and threatened to quit the European Union if it fails to reform.

With this year's election being described as the most unpredictable in a generation, the first round of voting could theoretically produce a runoff between the far-right and far-left candidates.

In that event, either outcome on May 7 would be a challenge for France's European allies and its trading partners farther afield, who would prefer a degree of stability rather than destabilizing change.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi this month told his visiting French counterpart, Jean-Marc Ayrault, that their countries' relations were among the most mature and stable that existed between world powers.

Ayrault assured him that the strategic global partnership between France and China would continue to strengthen, regardless of the outcome of the French election.

That may turn out to be wishful thinking if either Le Pen or Melenchon is elected president.

Superficially, Beijing might be expected to see some advantage in a Melenchon victory. A self-declared "friend of China", his foreign policy is focused on the developing world in opposition to US-led Western hegemony.

He has also echoed Chinese proposals for a global common currency, which he says would liberate the economy from the domination of the US dollar.

However, with his defense of "solidarity protectionism", his denunciations of globalization and his readiness to see France quit the EU, Melenchon, like Le Pen, is reason for concern in the eyes of France's international partners.

It may be that France opts for neither of the extreme options. With the conservative candidate Francois Fillon on the ropes over alleged misuse of public funds, Macron has emerged as the candidate of stability - an economic liberal who is pro-EU and believes in strengthening European cooperation rather than weakening it.

He was neck-and-neck with Le Pen in an Ipsos poll two weeks ahead of the voting that gave both of them 22 percent of the first-round vote. Two-thirds of the electorate polled said they intended to cast their ballots.

Le Pen has the most solid support among voters who have already made up their minds, while around a third of Melenchon and Macron supporters polled said they might yet switch their choice.

The bad news for all the candidates was that, among people who did not plan to vote, almost half agreed with the proposition that politicians in general had proved a disappointment and "we no longer believe in them".

The author is a senior media consultant for China Daily. Contact him at harvey.morris@gmail.com